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Amal El-Mohtar

@amalelmohtar.com

Wrote half of This Is How You Lose the Time War & all of The River Has Roots. Next book: Seasons of Glass & Iron, March 24, 2026. I have a newsletter you can sign up for at amalelmohtar.com

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Amal El-Mohtar@amalelmohtar.com · 15h ago

So deeply moved to see this news on my brief emergence from retreat — I’m honoured & thrilled to see THE RIVER HAS ROOTS is a finalist for the World Fantasy Award! Congratulations to everyone else on the ballot! & now back to the woods!

2026 World Fantasy Awards Finalists

The World Fantasy Awards ballot for works published in 2025 has been announced. The awards will be presented during the 2026 World Fantasy Convention, scheduled for October 22-25, 2026 in Oakland C…

locusmag.com

Helen Rosner@hels.bsky.social · 3d ago

btw the intro to my @newyorkermag interview with Antonio Banderas today is also secretly my capsule review of the new Anthony Bourdain bio-pic, “Tony,” which is way better than I was worried it would be

I saw "Tony," the new bio-pic about Anthony Bourdain, earlier this summer, at a private screening attended largely by people in the world of hospitality and food media, many of whom, myself included, knew the real Bourdain. Food people are normally a raucous, emotive bunch, but there was a tightness in the air as folks arrived and took their seats. Pretty much everyone in the room admitted, in murmurs and whispers, that we were nervous about the film—that it would be superficial, or dehumanizingly hagiographic, or else just sort of clunkily bad, in the way that bio-pics often are, relying overmuch on a viewer's knowledge of who the movie's subject was and would become. But the director of "Tony," Matt Johnson, wisely constrains his story—loosely based on a few early chapters of "Kitchen Confidential," with its narrative arc fairly fictionalized—to one mid-seventies summer. We follow a college-age Bourdain as he bums around Provincetown, trying to be a writer and working his first kitchen job, and the result turns out to be a sharp, intelligent film. ('It's a bildungsroman," a nerdily angelic, beautifully stupid young Tony explains to a panel of white-haired professors in the movie's opening scene, petitioning for funding for a novel he plans to write. It sure is, kid.)The movie-which comes out August 7th—is a star turn for Dominic Sessa, who plays the young Tony with adenoidal swagger. But the most extraordinary thing on the screen is Antonio Banderas, who delivers an astonishing, devastating performance as the proprietor of the restaurant where Bourdain finds work, and on whose porch Tony ends up sleeping for the summer. Chef-the character is nameless, and seemingly unknowable—is a mentor and a foil to Tony, his lined face and graying beard highlighting Tony's youth, his composure framing Tony's jittery ambition. Chef is unbothered by his kitchen staff fighting, yelling, stealing, and openly doing drugs, but he draws the line at any blasphemous utterance of the Lord's name, and he makes Tony join him at church every week as a condition of his ongoing residence in Chef's hammock. Banderas has been, for well over thirty years now, one of our most bombastic, most movie-star movie stars, whether he's brandishing a period-accurate rapier or succumbing to Almodovarian psychodrama. In the very human-scale role of Chef, all that glamour and pageantry seethes just beneath the skin. The movie doesn't shy away from letting Tony make mistakes—at times, the character edges toward outright villainy—and Banderas animates Chef with a contrasting moral clarity whose force feels almost physical.
Chaucer Doth Tweet@levostregc.bsky.social · 4d ago

Chatgpt ys the opposite of educacioun. It ys rustinge and dulling our skilles, draininge the knowledge from ower heades lyke sap from trees, makinge us clayme pieces of writinge as our owne when thei are the plagiarism spoor of a nastye heart-free machyne.

Stu West@stuwest.com · 4d ago

I've got the official tie-in book to Oliver Stone's JFK, which contains not just the screenplay and some historical notes, but also reviews, news articles and outraged letters to the editor about the movie, and I strongly feel Christopher Nolan should now publish something similar for The Odyssey

Cover to JFK: The Book of the Film. Featuring "the documented screenplay" and "the JFK debate" with contributions from Norman Mailer, Tom Wicker, Gerald R. Ford and others
Bree (half of Kit Rocha)@mostlybree.kitrocha.com · 4d ago

jesus christ, this would be groundbreaking. I got my official retroactive diagnosis when I had surgery and after I woke up the doctor was like "yep we fixed the cystic ovaries but also we took out your appendix because endo adhesions had just sorta eaten it" and that is not ideal!

Ada Palmer@adapalmer.bsky.social · 5d ago

Endometriosis takes nine years to diagnose. That’s about to change. NICE has approved two tests: a saliva test reading microRNA markers, and a gut-sensor test returning results in 45 minutes, sparing women the keyhole surgery currently needed. buff.ly/QX3jHk8 #ShareGoodNewsToo

Amal El-Mohtar@amalelmohtar.com · 4d ago

I'm going to be off-grid for almost 2 weeks starting tomorrow evening, which, among other things, means getting my Hugo ballot in today! Join me in a bit of illusory body-doubling if you are daunted by this task & feel so inclined

Stu West@stuwest.com · 4d ago

The Byrne’s Supper was a legendary night in the annals of Scottish comics fandom. My only regret is that I didn’t show up dressed as a character from Tutti Frutti, in tribute to the wrong John Byrne

Al Kennedy@alkennedy.bsky.social · 4d ago

About 20 years ago, we held a Burns Supper at our flat, with @stuwest.com @craig-mcgill.bsky.social @wilsondeluxe.bsky.social and others, but because we were (were?) comics nerds, we had a Byrne's Supper instead. We had readings from comics he'd scripted, and I read the Mr Immortal Memory.

Anna Holmes@annabookwriter.bsky.social · 5d ago

A friend reached out this evening to request clarification on an AI apologist’s talking point, and it’s worth reiterating: Digitizing is a process librarians, archivists, and curators understand to preserve the information inside a book as a unique entity. What these bros are doing is destroying.

Kate Heartfield@kateheartfield.com · 5d ago

Oh hey, I think this is the first official word about my 2027 novel, THE REALM INVISIBLE. I took John Crowley and John le Carré as my guiding stars for this one. Elizabethan spies in the cold war between England and Spain, with, naturally, weird stuff happening. Edited by Jane Johnson.

The Realm Invisible

From SUNDAY TIMES bestselling author of The Embroidered Book and The Valkyrie comes a thrilling historical fantasy of secret agents, sorcerers, and the Span...

harpercollins.com

Amal El-Mohtar@amalelmohtar.com · 5d ago

The new Spider-Man movie is GENUINELY GREAT??? It has five acts???? It made me cry?????? The writing is tight & moving & beautiful & the chemistry between performers is fantastic & I loved it & would watch it again!

Raquel 🌈✨@aistear.bsky.social · 5d ago

Just finished @amalelmohtar.com's Seasons of Glass and Iron and goshhhhh, that was just absolutely exquisite and beautiful 🤌🏻 I already know so many of these stories will nestle in my heart for so long. If I can only highlight one fragment, let it be this one 💕 (hidden because of possible spoilers!)

Maggie Tokuda-Hall@maggietokudahall.bsky.social · 6d ago

ok I have too many copies of The Siren, The Song and The Spy in hardcover. Respond to this post with your favorite dad joke. I will DM you if you are the winner of a free, signed, hardcover copy of this book (the Sequel to The Mermaid The Witch and The Sea). This is not a FAIR contest but it's fun